ARM CEO expects mobile-chip market to grow

LisaFleisher

The chief executive of British chip designer ARM Holdings PLC said Tuesday that he expects the market for chips in mobile, networking and microcontroller sectors to grow by about 50% through 2018.

As concern grows over the global saturation of high-end smartphones, ARM CEO Simon Segars said there is a big opportunity in low- to medium-priced smartphones. Chips designed by the company are in 95% of all smartphones.

"We're just scratching the surface of where mobile's going to go and what mobile can do," Mr. Segars said during the Cambridge-based company's annual investor and analyst day.

Beyond phones and tablets, the company is looking for growth in phone carrier networks, server and cloud-computing data centers, and microcontrollers and chips in everyday devices, or a concept known as the "Internet of things."

"The 'Internet of things' has the opportunity to benefit pretty much every company on the planet, and every company can become high-tech in some way or another," Mr. Segars said.

ARM currently has about 5% of the growing data storage market and about 22% of the market for microcontrollers and other connected objects. Mr. Segars forecast the markets for those categories will grow by about 50% to $20 billion each by 2018.

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